A New Hope

I first saw Star Wars when I was just 6 years old.
My father was dying to see it when it got released on May 25 1977. I think he
said that he saw it 3 times in the first week it opened.

He took me and my sister to see it the next week (on a Saturday) and since
then I've never been the same.

As I watched the film for the first time I hid my eyes under my hands through
the Cantina scene (hey, I was 6 years old, the monsters were ugly). The next 10
or more times I saw it in the theater over the next 2 years I watched with eyes
wide open.

It was showing in a theater on 42nd and 6th Avenue that had an
"old" panavision screen (10 times as wide and high as today's "gigga-plex"
screens) and the theater was equipped with the latest Cerwin-Vega SenSurround
speaker system and Dolby 70mm magnetic Surround system decoding.
To this day if I hear the Fox fanfare in loud clear sound I revert to the
mentality of a 6 year old and the excitement of what I'm about to see (yet
again) makes me want to blow chunks.

All George Lucas really did was to retell the myths, legends, and fables of
the world in a old Buster Crabb "Buck Rogers", "Flash
Gordon", serial style set in space.

I think the film's) are still popular today because of this. The basic plot
is simple enough that everybody can follow it and everybody can relate to it on
a Good VS. Evil level.
It's a retelling of our own stories from our culture in symbols we can all
relate to from other stories: The kindly old man with the white beard, the black
clad evil war lord, the naive simple farm boy who dreams of adventure, pirate
and his unique first mate, a comic relief duo, a white clad princess that needed
to be rescued, a tyrannical "Empire" and the fight of a small
"Rebel" band struggling against outrageous odds to win their freedom,
the old dying wizard and his need to pass on what he knows to his new
apprentice, an old dying religion in favor of new technology, etc.

I had a chance to see the Special Editions on the opening day (1st one to buy
Tix for all 3 films in my city) and it was exciting but nothing like it
was 20 years before that.